CHRISTIAN HORNER has opened up on the terrifying moment he had a panic attack in the middle of a Formula One race.
The ex-Red Bull chief led the team for more than 20 years before he was sacked last summer and given a £67million termination payoff.
Horner, 52, has had plenty of free time to reflect on his time in the sport and to make use of his newly found free time.
That time has seen him release a book, Drive, which is releasing fully on October 26.
And to advertise it he is conducting a book tour meeting audiences across the UK, which started in York on Saturday.
During that first fan meet, Horner spoke on several subjects including his potential return to F1, his talks to sign the likes of Lewis Hamilton and Fernando Alonso and his relationship with Spice Girl Geri Horner.
But in a candid moment of the evening the F1 chief opened up on when he realised he had experienced a panic attack, which he thought at the time was a “heart attack”.
He said: “I just had anxiety. It was about 2011, 2012, and it was one of those days in Hockenheim, Germany, it was sort of muggy and I’d had a couple of cappuccinos in the morning, and I think I had had half a Red Bull.
“And I’m sitting on the on the pit wall, and I just became very conscious of my own breathing.
“Suddenly I started feeling a bit dizzy, and this and that. I put it down to too much caffeine, but the whole place was spinning.
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“I could feel this sort of you start getting pins and needles in your fingers, I was like, ‘s***, I’m having a heart attack.’ I didn’t have a coffee for the rest of the day or the rest of the weekend.”
At that time Red Bull were in the midst of winning four constructors’ and four driver’ s championships in a row with Sebastian Vettel.
Yet Horner explained the pressure of being the team’s all-encompassing leader was getting to him.
“And then I had it again in another meeting back in the factory, and I had to leave the meeting and excuse myself because I could just feel my breathing getting shallower and shallower.
“I went and got myself checked out, and they said, ‘Mr Horner, there’s absolutely nothing the matter with you. I think you’ve had what they call an anxiety attack.’
“I thought, ‘Why am I having an anxiety attack? You know, we’re winning races, we’re going okay, blah, blah, blah.’
“And I think it was just you know, my body giving me a warning to say, ‘whoa,’ you know.
“Because the travel, the jet lag, you rush from an airplane back into the office. And the pressure, the phone’s always there by the side of the bed, you know, you’re never you’re always on.”
Horner added he was immensely proud of his time at Red Bull, including seeing the in-house built engine he oversaw much of the development of win its first races under Max Verstappen at the last two F1 races this season.
He added: “I didn’t have enough discipline in my life at the time and my body was telling me, ‘stop abusing me’.
“So when I recognised the symptoms and I was able to think, ‘okay, yeah,’ and know, when you could feel it coming, you just breathe, or go for a walk, and it passed.
“I did put the gym kit on, I didn’t go to the coffee shop, I did go for a run.”
He previously revealed he had suffered panic attacks following his “painful” end at Red Bull, describing the sacking just after the British Grand Prix in 2025 as “brutal”.